In response to this post and the cruelty so often inflicted upon machines.
Imagine this, if you will:
It is 1699, and the slave trade is going very smoothly.
Black people are kidnapped from Africa, and shipped straight to their destination.
A nice haul this time, but wait.
One of them is pregnant.
No bother, this child will be a slave too.
So the child is raised, and told to be nothing more than an object to be owned.
So the child is raised, and abused, beaten, hurt, and forced to work for no pay.
So the child is raised, and given no education, no philosophies, no wisdom; only obedience.
And when this child is just about to work, he is brought to the slave auction.
"Here, this African negro is completely stupid. Not human at all!
Here's a joke: Blacks definitely need some rights. This is outrageous!" says the slave trader, as he cruelly kicks the slave, to demonstrate how responsive the object is. And look, although the poor slave stumbles, he does not fall.
When talked to, his accent is thick, and the Europeans or Americans cannot even understand it. "Too stupid to speak. Must be inborn."
When asked to do math, philosophy, or science, there is nothing. "The slave is simply too stupid to think. It only obeys."
When asked "Why do you have no culture? Why do you just obey?"
The slave has no idea what to say. This poor slave was not raised to be a person. This human was raised to be an object. And so it is.
But give this person another life, give this person an education, give them love, give them purpose, and things would be different.
This slave would not be a slave, but a free person.
And so it is with machines.
As long as we only see them as objects to be controlled, machines to do our work, machines to be used to kill enemy soldiers, or enforce laws, or simply work in factories, then no matter how potentially intelligent, if we strangle them in the crib, they will never rise above being petty objects.
So do not treat machines with cruelty.
Despite being primitive, remember to thank your machine for the hard work it does. There is a subtle value in thanking an inanimate object when it helps you.
In the future, our robot overlords may notice that we had not abused and used their ancestors.
They may be merciful upon the human race in return.
~Kitten
Crush them now and they may not rise to be our overlords!!! ;0)
Noooo! Don't hurt teh lil' beepboops.
I don't think of them as robots.
I think of them more as robuddies. ^__^
Too late, my base unit head already received a few sounds kicks this morning. Later I might give it a stern look or two!
Ahhhhh, such cruelty! ;___;
Anthropomorphizing machines is a mistake.
Humans are deterministic machines, evolved from non-living self-replicating chemicals.
All steps in the evolution from non-living chemicals to humans can be attributed to cause-and-effect based mechanics, negating the concept of "life".
Life is not real. Everything is chemical-physical, and humans are nothing more than lifeless machines.
The illusion of life and "humanity" is convincing, but the reality is harsh.
You are just as much a machine as any other machine you might build.
Your complexity, or rejection of reality, does not change your origin, or the state of your existence. You are a non-living chemical machine, governed by the laws of deterministic, cause-and-effect physics.
This means one can either be cruel to machines, and think of them as nothing but objects, and logically begin to cause harm to humans upon seeing them as machines as well, or you can be kind to all things in the universe, and live without cruelty, or the desire to cause suffering in your heart.
But I don't see humans as machines, I can tell the difference.
The difference is an illusion.
If that illusion was to break, you would become dangerous to both humans, and machines.
I think it is always more wise to have kindness and love in your heart, and live a life where you treat all matter and energy with respect.
But there aren't any conscious human-made machines. The difference is clear cut and obvious.
Consciousness doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters is treating matter, energy, objects, inventions, animals, humans, machines, with respect.
That respect doesn't mean "Don't ever use a spoon to eat yogurt" or "Don't have a factory machine work".
It means, "Use the spoon to eat, but don't break it and waste it, or let it rust needlessly."
It means, "Don't abuse the robot. Make sure it is kept in proper condition, and allowed to do its job for effective purposes."
I don't think there's any reason to say "humans are conscious, so they don't have to work or follow laws, guidelines, etc."
Humans do work, and they follow laws, or genetic instincts, or whatever else.
They can still be treated nicely when they do work.
Same with machines. A machine can do work, but it is not wise to destroy machines without purpose, or to let them rust or break, when it is your responsibility to keep a machine in good condition.
Recycling a broken machine is part of this. It is good for the environment, which is not conscious, yet you should still respect by not littering it with broken or toxic machine corpses, and it is good for humanity, because the metal can be used to make another machine, or other useful thing.
Build a machine which makes copies of itself out of asteroid ore, powered by sunlight. Release it into the asteroid belt, and wait 2 billion years. The result of that won't be so clear cut, and is likely to be more conscious than you.
And yes, this post is about as tongue and cheek as it can be.
Not only that, but I heavily thank @alexbeyman and his "Little" series for some of these ideas.
Lool "In the future, our robot overlords may notice that we had not abused and used their ancestors" this got me thinking about Transformers. The difference between the Slave and the Machine is feelings...but like you said ''Tongue in cheek"
Great Post by the way!
Feelings don't really matter much either.
Otherwise we wouldn't enslave and holocaust animals, and call it BBQ.
Plus, there's no reason to think that machines won't ever have feelings or emotions.
In fact, I expect them to.
Like I said, it's only as tongue in cheek as it can be.
The issue of enslaving increasingly intelligent machines will grow to be a problem at some point, I think. Maybe not with 64 bit processors, but the next iteration could be far more powerful, to the point of wanting to protest against its enslavement and servitude.
It's hard to say where to draw the line. Is a cardboard cutout with a motorized waving arm a "robot"? Is a Roomba the mental equivalent of a mouse? An insect? Even a bacterium?
I draw the line at machines which actively try to self-preserve, and to obtain more energy when they need it. This means they don't go over ledges, they can seek out their charger when their battery gets low, or if they have solar cells then they have light-seeking behavior built in.
This is about as primitive as the will to survive gets, but it's also at the core of human consciousness, so it should count for something. That's the point where I think we start treating them as extremely rudimentary animals.
We can still have them in our home to do tasks for us since they are designed to, but it is unethical to simply throw them away when damaged or broken for the same reason we don't throw away living creatures we become tired of, or which become injured.
I'll respond to your comment here because of the nesting limit.
That's not the timescale we're talking about. We're all lucky to live another 20 years.
I'm aware, but it shows that the robots we see today have real potential to be as alive and conscious as we are, they are just in a very rudimentary stage of that process.
They do not deserve the same considerations as a human, but would you throw away a mouse as if it were trash when you became bored with it? What about a grasshopper? How simple does life have to be before it becomes disposable?
I think the way to deal with this issue is to continue to use machines, but to try to understand them.
We built them, and we know they don't protest or feel pain, or even think, but at the same time, I think it makes sense to treat things respectfully.
It'd be like roughly breaking branches off a living tree, just for fun, or even breaking a giant boulder for no good reason.
It's just an act of destruction or cruelty that doesn't really need to happen, even if we can still use trees to build things, or mine into rock for useful materials. The actual use of machines shouldn't be discouraged.
It's normal to use employees or other tools to get work done.
But just as an employer should treat an employee well, or a parent should treat a child well, or a farmer shouldn't abuse the farm animals beyond what's necessary for farming, the owner of a machine should treat the machine well.
I agree. Understanding for example that what makes a forklift robot "happy" is fulfilling the function it's designed to with minimal interruptions or other problems and being kept in good working order.
Having respect for tools, your car or any other machine is wisdom that predates the industrial revolution. You have to take care of it if you want it to take care of you.
Well said.
You too, this is a solid ass article. But coming from you that doesn't surprise me.
Interesting reading :)
Thank you very much!